Australia Rules Linking to Copyright Material Also Illegal

An anonymous reader writes "A recent ruling in Federal court upheld the ruling that the operator and ISP that hosted the site 'mp3s4free.net' were guilty of copyright infringement violations because they provided access to the copyright material. From the article: 'Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organization Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."'"

Comments

Re:The really scary part of this ruling....

[arkhan_jg]

Thing is, as a layman, this ruling doesn't strike me as radically different to the concepts of vicarious and contributory infringement already common in US courts. If the big US hosting companies, search engines and content aggregators are prepared to cope with vicarious copyright infringement threats (which is what took down the original napster) why not this?

Contributory infringement

        CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
        The standard definition for contributory copyright infringement is when the defendant, "with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another." [2] In other words, the record labels must not only show ownership of a valid copyright and unlawful copying but must show that the P2P company 1) had knowledge of the infringing activity and 2) materially contributed to the infringing conduct. Again, this is for the purpose of holding someone other than the infringer liable for copyright infringement.

        VICARIOUS INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
        Vicarious liability is another means of holding someone liable for copyright infringement even when that person or party is not the one who did the infringing. In order to find a defendant liable under the theory of vicarious liability for the actions of an infringer, it must be shown that the defendant 1) has the right and ability to control the infringer's acts, and 2) receives a direct financial benefit from the infringement.[3] Unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability. However, courts have determined that the combination of the right and ability to control the infringer's acts and the receipt of a direct financial benefit from the infringement suffices to hold a defendant vicariously liable for copyright infringement, even if the defendant had no knowledge of the particular infringement.[4]

Re:The really scary part of this ruling....

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

If the big US hosting companies, search engines and content aggregators are prepared to cope with vicarious copyright infringement threats (which is what took down the original napster) why not this?

Did you read the last few lines of tfa?

"Mp3s4free was different in the sense that it actually catalogued MP3 files that were infringing copyright material - Google doesn't do that," she said.

"There is, however, action that is being taken against Google in other jurisdictions, and we're awaiting that eagerly."

I'm no copyright lawyer, yet alone an Australian one, but seriously.... the attitude displayed by the prosecuting lawyer & judge is....scary

Oh ye of little faith :-)

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The entertainment/military/industrial complex is working with the big telcos to make sure Slashdot becomes a quaint throwback to the days of open internet. Sure there will still be geeks pining about the days when any old body could put up a web site that could get the same attention as one put up by Sony, and a couple of nobodies could come up with a Google, but face it, that's just not the way of the world.

I'll take that bet. My money's on the world.

Historically, it has been common for industries, laws, and other Big Systems to favour the corporations in new endeavours. Twice armed is he who knows his cause is just, but thrice armed is he who gets his blow in first, and all that. Let's face it, corporations with their huge financial and lobbying power tend to be pretty quick off the mark at stealing an advantage over the public. Perhaps more to the point, until they try it, the public don't know what they have to protect themselves against.

But a little further down the line, perhaps 5-10 years for the things I can think of off the top of my head, the public always win. The next big swing I'm expecting is for DRM, when the public start to realise that they've been had. DRM is relatively safe as long as it doesn't annoy the average person and only geeks see what's wrong with it, but it's been getting serious for a few years now. As people's first MP3 players start dying or they upgrade their PCs and they realise they can't take their music collection with them, as people who spent a fortune on early HDTVs get told they can't watch HD discs they paid a premium for at any better resolution than a normal DVD because of something called HDCP, as people whose legitimately purchased software starts deactivating itself in a case of mistaken identity and costing them or their business time and money... Then the people will cease to accept it, DRM will become a political timebomb, and the politicians and lawyers will turn on the tech and media companies who advocate DRM like piranha in a frenzy. It always ends this way, when something good is corrupted by corporate interests; it's only a matter of time.

Re:Oh ye of little faith :-)

[mspohr]

Until you have a political system so corrupt that businesses do get a vote like citizens

In the USA, business don't literally vote but they do control the politicians through a corrupt political process. Politicians need money to get elected and businesses are happy to provide lots of money. In return, the politicians give the businesses whatever laws they want. Voters have only a small role. They respond to the TV ads which appeal to base instincts (fear, greed) and then are ignored until the next election.

Re:The really scary part of this ruling....

[Richard Steiner]

Any MP3 file, once created, is copyrighted by its creator at the moment of its creation, at least of the country the creator resides in is a signatory to the Berne Conventions. This includes Australia.

That means that the statement "copyrighted mp3s" is meaningless. All MP3 files are copyrighted. Some MP3 files may be freely copied, while others may not, but that is unrelated to their copyright status.

Re:The really scary part of this ruling....

[shark72]

"Don't I automatically own the copyright to anything I write? If that is so, then would having a link to any web-page that you didn't write yourself be an infringement? Are links generated by search engines now illegal in Australia?"

Doubtful. The news.com.com.com article goes a little more in to this. He tried the "google defense" and was rebuffed. While it's clear that many Slashdotters do not see the difference between operating a general-purpose search engine and operating a site with the express purpose of providing links to pirated MP3s, the justices in this case did.

I don't understand at all

[Jugalator]

Almost everything on the web is copyrighted?

Even if something is freeware, it's still copyrighted.

Open source like Firefox is copyrighted too.

This just get a big WTF from me.

This random image (warning, illegal link!?) is copyrighted unless the photographer explicitly released his rights and placed it into the public domain, which is a quite rare thing to do. All created material is copyrighted the owner, even if the owner doesn't claim so, right?